The SEI helps advance software engineering principles and practices and serves as a national resource in software engineering, computer security, and process improvement. The SEI works closely with defense and government organizations, industry, and academia to continually improve software-intensive systems. Its core purpose is to help organizations improve their software engineering capabilities and develop or acquire the right software, defect free, within budget and on time, every time.

Sample Product Line for Learning

The Arcade Game Maker (AGM) product line is an example product line created to support learning about and experimenting with software product lines. The product line encompasses three simple arcade games. The primary goal has been to be comprehensive rather than focus on high-quality graphics. The material available follows the basic product line approach described in Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns.

This example has been incrementally created over two years with a great deal of evolution. This site, and the product line, is evolving. As the product line is used to illustrate topics in various courses, the material is added to the site. The initial release captures the current state of the product line artifacts. As time permits, historical artifacts will be added to show the evolution from a single product example to a product line example.

The Arcade Game Maker product line is a simple, but comprehensive, example. Arcade Game Maker is a fictitious company. A context document is provided that describes meta-information about the organization, its personnel, and the general setting for the example. This information is important to understanding the decisions made at various points in building the product line.